Gado Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Sauce)

Gado-Gado is perfect for a light summer lunch option. Use whatever vegetables or even fruits you fancy.  This salad from Indonesia is served with delicious peanut sauce that uses a few ingredients to make.

Healthy Asian Cuisine.com

Makes: 4 Servings Preparation Time: 15 Minutes Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Course: Main Cause

Cuisine: Indonesian, Vegan, Vegetarian

Author: Healthy Asian Cuisine

Ingredients

• 1 boiled potato
• 200g/7oz tofu
• 100g/3.5oz broccoli
• 8 French beans
• 1 medium carrot
• A big handful of bean sprouts
• 2 cups baby spinach

For Peanut Sauce

• 50g/4 tablespoons fried or roasted peanut
• 1 tablespoon fried shallots or onions
• 1 teaspoon coconut sugar or dark brown sugar
• ⅓ small red chilli, plus more to increase heat
• ⅓ garlic
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 60ml/¼ cup water, plus more if too thick

Method

Step No. 1: Making the Peanut sauce

1. To prepare peanuts, use a medium-size fry pan, and toast the nuts over medium-low heat until golden. Set aside. Alternatively, you can toast the nuts in the oven (see notes for details).
2. In a blender pulse the peanuts a few times. Add the fried shallots, coconut sugar, small chilli, garlic, salt and 60ml or 1/4cup of water and blend to combine. 
3. Before finishing blending, taste the sauce and add more salt, chilli or sugar according to your taste.  Add more water (a tablespoon at a time) if the sauce is too thick.

Step No. 2: Preparing for the rest of the Ingredients

1. To prepare the tofu, give it a little squeeze with a kitchen towel to remove most of the moisture so that it will fry better.  Cut the tofu into even bite-size squares.
2. Peel and cut the carrot into batonnet. The size of the batonnet cut is roughly 6mm x 6mm x 6mm (1/4″ x 1/4″ x 2½”).
3. Cut the cooked potato into 1-inch cubes.
4. Prepare the French beans by cutting off the harder stem on both ends then cut them into 4 or 5cm (1½ to 2-inches) long pieces.
5. Wash and cut the broccoli into bite-size florets.

Step No 3: Cooking the Vegetables

1. To brown the tofu, heat a non-stick pan over medium-high heat.  We are going to cook these tofu cubes without oil because we want to reduce fat and calories. Cook the tofu for about 4 to 5 minutes until golden. 
2. To cook the rest of the vegetables, bring a medium pot of water to a boil and add ½ teaspoon of salt.   First, cook the carrot and French beans for 1 minute in the boiling water. Next, blanch broccoli florets in the boiling water for 2 minutes. Then add the bean sprouts and blanch for 6-8 seconds.  Finally, blanch the spinach until they become wilted. Keep all cooked vegetables aside.

Step No 4: Assembling and Serving Gado-Gado

1. Place all the boiled vegetables on the plate beside each other, as well as the fried tofu. Put the peanut sauce in a separate bowl add some fried onion on top and then let diners serve themselves. Alternatively, you can pour the peanut sauce onto the vegetable salad as you serve the guests. Enjoy!